Half Life 2 problems

Post by **DRuM** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:56 pm

I've just finished a perfect working game ( doom3) to a game that's giving me grief. First off, I have a vid cvid decompressor problem, exactly as described in this thread.

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=52302

I read elsewhere someone else also had the same problem, but there was no solution other than someone mentioning it could be to do with an indeo codec.

Secondly, when I click on new game, the loading screen gets a little way with the white bars appearing, then freezes. I've had to press the reset button twice now. What gives? I literally unwrapped the game today, popped the DVD in, installed steam, installed the game, and created a steam account. All systems go! Then this. Haven't even managed to get into the game yet, except the options/new game screen.

Post by **Scourge** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 12:06 am

You did decrypt the game files through steam right?

Post by **DRuM** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 12:23 am

Yep, did that.

Post by **DRuM** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 11:15 am

I managed to load the game, get to the point where I have to escape through a window, walk through a door, then it said loading( for the next bit of the game) and the game froze on me.

Post by **GODLIKE** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 9:18 pm

Are you sure you're waiting long enough? Half Life 2 has level load screens that occur randomly throughout the game (like three times, when you're running upstairs in the beginning of the game) and are kinda annoying...

You're used to Doom3 where level loads occur at points that are essentially logical for the gameplay (like, an elevator)...

:icon25:

Post by **Scourge** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 9:23 pm

And they do take a while to load sometimes.

Post by **Foo** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 9:32 pm

Make sure that via steam you have decrypted not just the HL2 single player but the HL2DM and CS as well.

I had a few issues until I did all 3.

Post by **DRuM** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 3:49 pm

GODLIKE wrote:Are you sure you're waiting long enough? Half Life 2 has level load screens that occur randomly throughout the game (like three times, when you're running upstairs in the beginning of the game) and are kinda annoying...

You're used to Doom3 where level loads occur at points that are essentially logical for the gameplay (like, an elevator)...

:icon25:

That's the bit where it's crashing, just as I'm about to run upstairs.
I waited over 5 minutes today on the loading screen. I had to alt tab and ctrl del to get out of it, plus it doesn't revert my desktop res. I updated to cat 6.1 as well. I'll have to see if uninstalling and reinstalling the game helps. And how about the vid decompressor, any ideas on that?

Foo, when I installed, it gave me the choice for HL2 and CS Source. I only chose HL2.

Post by **DRuM** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 5:40 pm

Ok, so I uninstalled and tried to reinstall. It got so far then came up with:

'Error 1334: The file 'hl2.ico1' cannot be installed because
the file cannot be found in cabinet file 'hl24.cab'. This
could indicate a network error, an error reading from the CD-
ROM, or a problem with this package. '

I decided to extract the whole DVD with isobuster. So I did that, made a TAO file and a cue file. Loaded cue file with alcohol, and after some time, same message. Then I read on a forum someone else with the same error. Solution: you have to install CS Source as well! I mean seriously, wtf are valve playing at? It's not enough that you have to fuck around with steam accounts and decrypting, but you have to install more than just the game you want to play. They give you the option to install either, yet you actually have to install the whole lot anyway. So it's all installed now and decrypting. I am hoping that by playing the game from alcohol and not from the DVD that loading won't be a problem anymore, we'll see.

Post by **DRuM** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 7:26 pm

Wow, what a POS. I've never had so much trouble trying to run a game. Still takes ages to load the first screen and still locks up when trying to load the next part of the game at the stairs. I noticed CS Source still needs updating and it's taking about 20 minutes to increase by 1%, currently still at 82%. Do I really need to spend hours updating CS just to play HL2? How the fuck do I get this game to work? I've registered at the steam forums, activated my account but can't post there until I've been added by the moderators. Steam = piece of shit.

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 7:45 pm

Dude, i know this sounds fucked up... unintall Steam, and delete its contents..

reinstall steam from http://www.steampowered.com, Sign in.. click on games, and then HL2...

it will download off of the steam servers ( warning it will take a wile... all ~4 gig's of it )

And try it like that..

Post by **DRuM** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 7:51 pm

"it will download off of the steam servers ( warning it will take a wile... all ~4 gig's of it ) "

And download half life 2 from them you mean? For free? I don't understand.

Post by **DRuM** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 8:06 pm

I looked at my advanced video options ingame. Most of the settings were high and asterixed as recommended by the game.
Yet I found by setting everything to low and changing to 800x600 res I managed to get past the loading screen. So I can conintue the game on low settings. Now I'm gonna see if I can put the high settings back again. What a joke this is.

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 8:10 pm

one of the things about steam, is that once you setup your account for a game, you dont need the cd-key anymore, or the CD's...

When you are in a fresh install of steam, you obvioulsy wont have any games installed, but you will have a list of game offered right?

Click on HL2 and it will prompt and say that it needs X amount of hdd space to install, Click on Download...

it will download the Game off of Steams servers and install it to your HDD...

from what i am hearing it sounds like something isent copying over properly from your optical's...

if what you are trying does not work, give what i suggested a swing ( best bet to do it before you are going to bed and just leave it run all night )

Gl mang!

Post by **DRuM** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 8:41 pm

Thanks amidy, I'll possibly try your suggestion later. However, it seems the loadng problem is based on my graphics card. I saved the game past the loading screen and reset the video settings to high. Everything was fine. Game plays great in high setting. But then came another section of the game with a load screen and same thing. Since there's obviously going to be these loading screens throughout the game, I think I'll have to play on lower settings, although I don't know why the game recommended high settings for my system. I need to find what settings I can keep on high and which to make low for the load screens to still work. Don't know if res from 1024 to 800 makes a difference.

Post by **Foo** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 8:43 pm

I love steam, although I love Vapour more.

And the possibilities that Vapour hints at even more than that.

Like I've said before, Steam is just the first instance of an online managed game system, it's the ones that follow which will be excellent. Steam in itself is so-so purely on its own merit.

Drum, if you're still having issues, care to list your specs and which version of HL2 you bought?

BTW I dont hear from you online no more. My net connection is due to go down any minute. I'm true to my word

Post by **DRuM** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 9:19 pm

Good stuff Foo. I am slowly but surely getting around to it myself.

I don't think steam is the problem anymore now that I seem to have isolated the problem to the video card. As far as my specs, I'm on 9800pro 128mb, XP2000+, 768mb ram, XP pro. I managed to get through several load screens fine on medium settings in 1024 res. Then I met the woman that helped me, got to a loading screen and it froze again. I can't understand it. I know my system is shit, but doom3 ran fine on high quality.

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 12:58 am

dude, Half-life uses diffrent rendering files depending on the rez that you are running on, and if one of the files that got decrypted was slightly corrupt then that would cause this..

Post by **DRuM** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 1:18 am

AmIdYfReAk wrote:Dude, i know this sounds fucked up... unintall Steam, and delete its contents..

reinstall steam from http://www.steampowered.com, Sign in.. click on games, and then HL2...

it will download off of the steam servers ( warning it will take a wile... all ~4 gig's of it )

And try it like that..

I'm dping what you suggested now amidy, since I'm fed up with the random behaviour of my install. You may be right, perhaps some files aren't getting carried over from my disc. I reinstalled steam, although it didn't recognise my password so I've changed it.
Currently downloading the game at around 135kb/sec. Should be done in about 7 hours, or by the morning. Thanks for the tip, hopefully it might work better

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 1:26 am

i hope so to mang, these things are trivial at best.

Good luck

Post by **DRuM** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 5:06 pm

No change. Exactly the same.

So, on medium settings it get's through a few loading screens and then freezes on another. I could play on the lowest settings with more chance of load screens working but no guarantee. But I don't see why I should have to. I played doom3 on high quality, 1024 res but with a bunch of things turned down. Is HL2 so much more intensive that I need to turn everything down? And why did it recommend me having high model textures, etc? Any other suggestions?

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 10:15 pm

i am guessing you have updated your drivers, closed apps running in the background?

i am kinda at a loss at what would be causing this. :/

Post by **DRuM** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 10:31 pm

Yeah I updated yesterday from cat 5.10b to 6.1. I could certainly try shutting all other apps down although I only had a few webpages up. Is there an earlier version of cats that is known to work better? How about omega drivers?

I've regged and posted at halflife2.net, see if they can shed any light.

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 3:42 am

also, reg/post at steampowered.com and see if they have anything to say..

and i dont see any diff with the Drivers with my 9800 truthfully mang

Post by **dzjepp** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 4:06 am

My advice would be (like foo) unlock all 3 games (hl2, cs:s, hl2dm, godename: gordon -- you never know

) via Steam download (not disk), AND under each game properties, local files tab -- verify integrity of game cache...

If anything is screwy with the files, it would re-download bits and pieces to overwrite the corrupted ones.